


Charlie and Sweet Dee Find Each Other

by Dalektable



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Background MacDennis, F/M, Hollywood AU, Homophobic Language, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-22
Updated: 2018-01-25
Packaged: 2019-03-08 00:41:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13446849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dalektable/pseuds/Dalektable
Summary: After the terrible fight that split the gang up after high school graduation, Dee and Dennis become semi-successful B-list actors with Frank as their manager. Charlie's an up-and-coming musician with Mac as his bodyguard. After more than a decade, Dee runs into Charlie at a party, and in the time that follows, she can't get him out of her head.





	1. The Gang Reunites

**Author's Note:**

> I really wanted to explore the idea of the gang being successful, at least to some degree, and initially they weren't supposed to have known each other at all, but the story flowed better this way, and kept an element of nostalgia and looking back that I feel the show can have at times. ( Considering they only seem to come into contact with people they knew in high school. )

Dee weaves her way through the after-party, not afraid to shoulder people out of the way to get to her intended target. She’s been abandoned by her brother and father, as is typical for a Hollywood party. Frank’s in the back bumping coke and Dennis is off trying to pick up a couple of models for a ‘private party.’ Dee, on the other hand, has one goal in mind: the drinks. Despite having enough cash of her own, there’s something about an open bar that’s just so tempting, and she needs a drink after dealing with Dennis for the entire evening. 

She brushes past someone who looks remarkably like he might actually be Ryan Reynolds, and thinks for a moment that maybe she should stop and chat, but brushes the thought away. A beer seems more welcoming at the moment than facing the reality of her luck in love nearly sober. Maybe a few more drinks in, when she’s sufficiently shameless enough. 

Making her way up to the bar, Dee gets the attention of the bartender and orders the really nice beer she likes and nearly never buys for herself. There are a few other people crowding around the bar, and when the beer is passed her way, she settles into a barstool and makes plans to stay there for a long time. There’s certainly no way she’s going to spend much time talking to any of these self-obsessed, narcissistic assholes. She certainly gets enough of that out of conversations with Dennis. 

It's the noise of the party is that keeps her from noticing strange man sitting beside her at first, who’s conversing loudly someone else about kittens.  Or--mittens for kittens? By the time she’s conscious of the conversation going on beside her, she’s not sure if it’s the droning noise of the party or the beer that’s made her feel so numb. 

Maybe it’s just her lifestyle. 

She’d never thought when she was growing up that she wouldn’t turn out to like the parties taht came along with her dream of being an actress. Dennis and their father seem to like them well enough, but by the time she gets a few beers in, she’s well past the point of wanting to go home. If it were just a few close friends, she thinks, maybe she’d like them--but that’s a joke, because Dee doesn’t have any friends who aren’t Dennis, and Dennis is a pretty shitty friend who leaves her feeling lower than garbage on a daily basis. 

Dee snorts, taking a long swig of her beer and lamenting the fact that she’s almost at the bottom. The men sitting beside her continue to talk, and she picks up a few stray words: milk steak, dayman, bird law. None of it makes any sense, and she’s already convinced this has to be some homeless crazy who wandered in off the street. 

It isn’t until he turns her direction that she realizes who he is. 

“Charlie Kelly?” She blurts the name out in surprise; her mouth feels rusty forming the syllables. 

He blinks, focusing on her instead of the scuffle on the other side of the room he’d turned to look at. 

“Dee?” Charlie Kelly looks just as confused right now as she remembers him being. 

She looks him up and down, trying to reconcile the man in front of her with the kid she’d known back in high school. He’s got the same face, albeit older, the same hair, and doesn’t seem to have gotten any taller, but his beard has filled in quite a bit, and he’s at least visibly clear of dirt and grime. And she doesn’t see any spiders anywhere nearby, with no one to make him eat them for entertainment value. 

There are some things about him that she hadn’t expected, and maybe it’s the distance put between them from time, the way he looks so cleaned up for the event. Namely, she notices the freckles across his nose and on his cheeks, the color of his eyes, the fact that he’s actually rather attractive. 

(Had he always been this hot? Her memories of him in high school are too clouded with how gross he was to tell.)

“What are you doing here?” She asks, crossing her arms and shifting her weight in her stool. Charlie doesn’t get a chance to answer, though, because another voice she recognizes speaks up for him. 

“He’s, like, famous now,” Ronnie the Rat says from the stool next to Charlie. “A hot shot musician. I’m his bodyguard.” The smile that spreads across Ronnie’s face is self-assured, proud. He’s just like Dee remembered, no sleeves and all, despite the party’s dress code. He’d probably gotten in like that by saying he was Charlie’s bodyguard, she thinks. She should try that sometime, when she doesn’t want to get dressed up to go somewhere. She’ll just show up in sweatpants and say she’s Dennis’ personal assistant and they’ll let her in. 

“Some music guy heard me playing at open mic night at a bar a few years ago and wanted to sell my songs,” Charlie says. He’s got a beer of his own in hand, and he takes a long drink of it. He seems oddly detached from the entire situation, not letting any emotion color his voice. 

“Is your brother here?” Ronnie asks, and she doesn’t miss the pink flush that spreads across his cheeks. That’s something she remembered from high school, and she wonders if he’d ever come out of the closet. 

“Yeah,” Dee says. “He’s somewhere over there trying to get laid.” She gestures to a darker corner of the room they’re in. “If you’re trying to bang him, you’ve got probably half an hour before he wants to leave with some model on his arm, so good luck.” 

Ronnie tries to make some protest, but the words seem to get stuck in his throat as his blush gets deeper and more pronounced before he stands up out of his seat, mumbles something about the area being clear, and walks-- _ briskly _ \--to the other side of the room. 

“So,” Dee says, turning to Charlie. “A musician.” She’s probably going to look him up as soon as she gets home. Or as soon as they’re in the car and on their way back home. She’s not entirely convinced of the story: it’s possible they’d just crashed this party and come up with the story as a cover. It’s not as if anyone in the room is sober, and it’s not as if everyone knows everyone. This isn’t somewhere friends come to hang out; it’s networking. Dee hates it. 

“Oh, yeah, dude,” Charlie begins, looking as enthused as he sounds. “They say I’m ‘up-and-coming.’ Mac and I got invited to this party because the people at the label wanted us to do some promotion for the album, but I don’t really like any of the people here so I’ve just been talking to Mac.” 

Dee blinks. “Mac?”

“Oh, yeah. He stopped going by Ronnie after high school.” 

“Huh.” Dee blinks, taking that in for a moment. She supposes it’s better than Ronnie or Ronald McDonald. “So you guys are still friends, then.” 

“Hell yeah. He’s been my best friend since we were children, of course we’re still friends.” 

Dee doesn’t bring up that the four of them used to be friends, because that’s a can of worms she doesn’t want to open up again. They’d all been planning to buy a bar together--well, the three of them had been planning to buy a bar together, to the exclusion of Dee--but at the last minute they’d fallen apart and stopped talking. Neither Dennis nor Dee bring up the inciting incident anymore, and she doubts Charlie and Ro--Mac do either. 

“What kind--what music are you writing?” She takes another sip of her beer, looking at Charlie curiously. It’s strange to see him so successful, but she supposes that it’s not like he didn’t deserve it. Charlie was always the best of them. Although he was prone to his fits of rage like everyone in their small group of misfits, he always had a bright outlook on life, always perky and happy to ignore life’s troubles to take joy in the simplest of things. They’d all called him stupid for it. 

“Whatever I want, you know. Songs about the Nightman, birds, really anything.” Dee isn’t sure if she’s imagining it or not, but he seems to color a bit, like Mac had when he was talking about Dennis. It makes her wonder, albeit briefly, if there’s more to his music than he’s implying. 

“They called me a musical sav-savage,” Charlie continues, smiling now, proud of his achievements. 

“Savant?” Dee asks, and Charlie nods. 

“Yeah--that.” 

It’s hard to imagine someone calling Charlie a savant anything, but then, hadn’t they all dismissed him back in high school? 

“Huh,” she says, at a loss for words yet again. It’s a little awkward to see Charlie again, particularly since he was mostly Ronn-Mac’s friend, and Mac was mostly Dennis’ friend. Dee was there out of brotherly obligation, but it never felt like anyone had liked her. Sure, there had been a handful of times they’d spoken without the others, and Charlie had seemed sweet and soft and not nearly as stupid as the other had said he was. 

“So,” she tries again. “When does the album come out?” Maybe she’ll give it a listen. Maybe she’ll give him a call. 

Charlie smiles in return and tells her. 


	2. Dirtgrub & The Aluminum Monster

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dee listens to Charlie's album.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no idea why I can't write longer chapters. The Fight™ that broke up the gang is going to eventually be revealed, but I liked the idea of keeping some of my cards hidden for now. I've got it written up, but it's just a matter of the right timing. Comments brighten my day.

**_Dayman_ **

Tracklisting: 

  1. Nightman
  2. The Troll’s Toll
  3. Dirtgrub
  4. Soul Spiders
  5. The Waitress
  6. Rat King
  7. Bird Law
  8. Go Fuck Yourself
  9. Aluminum Monster
  10. Bird with Teeth
  11. Dayman



A few weeks later, Dee’s holding a plastic CD case in her hand. The cover is an almost ridiculous picture of Charlie in over-exaggerated blush and a bright yellow suit, standing in front of a cutout of a sun. She has to admit that the photographer had done a good job--as ridiculous as the photo is, it looks professionally done, and Charlie looks happier than she ever remembers seeing him in high school. 

The tracklist on the back promises a unique experience, if nothing else, based only on the names listed on the back. A song clearly named after her high school nickname catches her eye, and she thinks about Charlie’s blush a few weeks prior, when they’d met at the party. She’s reading into it, she tells herself, because the last she knew him, Charlie was obsessed with a chick from high school who went on to become a waitress at a local coffee shop in their hometown of Philadelphia. 

She's not sure what she’s expecting the music to sound like, but she's pleasantly surprised. Charlie has a good voice, with a wide vocal range she hadn't anticipated. The music ranges from cheerful, upbeat, and optimistic, and dark and brooding. The instrumentation is simple but impactful regardless, and Dee finds herself surprised to be enjoying it.

She listens to the album once more, and then mulls over calling Charlie through a third listen. He'd initially written the number down himself, but she'd pulled out her phone and made him dictate it to her. If she'd taken that scrap of bar napkin home, she'd never have been able to make it out. She doesn’t think about why it’s so important for her to be able to get back in contact with him, she just looks at the numbers in her phone and thinks about where they lead.

She presses call just as the album starts again for the fourth time, lounging back against her loveseat and tapping her foot against her coffee table as she listens to it ring once, twice, three times before a sleepy voice answers. 

“Hello?” It's Charlie's voice, definitely.  She'd know after hearing it non-stop for the past three hours, if it hadn’t already been burned into her memory from the party a few weeks prior, and a few years in high school. It’s deeper now than it used to be when they were just kids, but still uniquely pitched. She remembers Dennis making fun of him. Back then she hadn’t thought too much of it--now she realizes how unwarranted it was. 

What a difference some time and distance makes.  

“It’s Dee. Do you maybe want to get some lunch?” She tries to sound less nervous than she feels, because she shouldn’t feel nervous about talking to  _ Charlie,  _ despite the events of the past that had led them here. 

There’s a beat before Charlie answers, and she wonders if he’s just tired or if he’s mulling it over. 

“Yeah,” he says, and Dee hates how happy it makes her feel.

They meet at the diner she'd suggested an hour later. It’s a small place that’s a little bit out of the way, so people are less likely to recognize her. (The voice in the back of her head reminds her that she’s still no Kiera Knightly or Scarlett Johansson, and it’s not like people come at her with signature books and polaroid cameras even when she walks down the streets of Hollywood.) She’s been here a few times, well enough to know that the food is decent and dirt-cheap; she’s not trying to  _ impress _ him, after all. 

Not that it would take much. 

Charlie looks a lot more like she remembers from high school now than he did at the party: a little unwashed, a little messy, and with a goofy grin on his face. He’s unguarded, something refreshing to see after all her time with Dennis all these years. Someone in their family would have come with a trick up their sleeve and pulled it out even when it turned out she was being genuine. Dee remembers that she would usually be that person, too.

They sit together at a booth that looks out onto the pothole-riddled parking lot, and a waitress in a dark blue uniform shirt comes by to take their drink orders. For a moment, they sit across from each other in silence, looking at the menus. Dee doesn't know what to do now that she’s gotten this far. If she’s being honest, she’s thought about this moment every day since the party: what she would say, what she would do. She sneaks glances up at him from across the table, but each time she goes to speak, the words just don’t seem right. 

And after all of that, it’s Charlie who speaks first.    
  
“I like menus with pictures,” he says, squinting at the words as if they’re in another language. Dee’s suddenly glad she chose a diner, because she’d forgotten about Charlie’s trouble reading until this moment. Or she’d just assumed he’d gotten past it, learned like everyone else. She doesn’t dwell on her own thoughts enough to comprehend them half the time; thinking too long leads to feeling too much, and she’s learned better than that. 

“Yeah,” she says. “It makes it easier.” 

They stare at the menus in silence for a few minutes. She expects it to be awkward, but it’s reminiscent of the times they would hang out and pass a joint back and forth in high school while Ronnie and Dennis were off doing whatever it was they did to the exclusion of Dee and Charlie. Back then, they’d sat together without the pressure to speak. It had been nice. A change of pace from the usual scheming and troublemaking. 

Dee looks across the table at Charlie, at the light from the window highlighting his freckles and a few smudges of dirt across his nose. 

“I listened to your songs,” she says, suddenly, right  before the waitress comes back to take their orders. Her cheeks get warm at the timing, a stranger now stuck between them and Charlie unable to answer. They order, an awkwardness creeping between them for the first time since they’d sat down. 

The waitress is gone for just a few seconds when Charlie speaks. 

“The songs on the album?” 

“What other songs would I have listened to, Charlie?” He flushes at the question. 

“Oh, right.” He says the words like a prelude. She wonders at the symphonies in his mind. 

“Did you write a song about me?” She doesn’t try to bite the words back. She remembers the lyrics of the  _ Aluminum Monster _ song, how some of the words had echoed some feeling in her that she’d buried long ago. 

Charlie nods. Dee curses. 

“If Dennis hears that song, he’s going to flip his lid.” Her voice is strained. 

“Well, I didn’t think he’d ever  _ hear _ any of it, and if he did, we would be safely far away. How was I supposed to know you guys had moved out here?” 

“Maybe watch a movie released after 1990,” Dee snaps. But he’d admitted to the song being about her, and she’s a little proud. She’s always wanted to be some musician’s muse, after all, even if it’s Charlie-fucking-Kelly, spider eater extraordinaire. 

“I’ll watch whatever movies I want, Dee.” He’s scowling, but she doesn’t think he’s genuinely hurt. 

Dee blinks, then smiles. It’s not long before she can’t help the laughter bubbling up in her throat, and Charlie’s laughing with her. 

“I missed this,” she says, honestly, looking into his eyes. 

“Me, too,” he says. His hand reaches across the table and brushes against hers before retreating. She wonders if they’re both thinking about the same thing. 

“Do you wanna go back to my place?” 

“Yes.” 

They leave before they even get the food. 


	3. Charlie and Sweet Dee Hang Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charlie and Dee spend some time together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Admittedly, the pace is insanely quick in this piece. Part of that is because the bulk of the actual timeline of it has to happen off-screen, essentially, or y'all would be bored to pieces, since most of it's just them hanging out doing literally fucking nothing. If they had just met for the first time, there'd be a lot of build up, but there's lingering feelings here that come back to life. I've figured out how long it's going to be, since I have most of the chapters at least partially written up, and it's not going to be insanely long. 
> 
> Also, Charlie's apartment here is better than his in the show, because he has some money in this canon. I also hate self-editing, so there may be mistakes in this. Sorry!

“Don’t tell Dennis that we’re spending time together,” Dee says a few hours later while they’re lounging on her small loveseat. It’s only ever her, maybe a one-night guest, so she’s never needed much more space. But now, with no room for either of them to go, their thighs brush with every movement. Her only other option is to push herself so obviously to one side that even Charlie Kelly would get suspicious. “And don’t tell Mac, because he’ll tell Dennis. I know they've been spending time together. Let’s just keep this between us. The guys would freak out, you know?”

She looks over at him, pleading with her eyes for him to understand where she’s coming from. He must remember the same thing she does, and nods.

They sit for a moment in silence, the movie playing on the television long forgotten by this point. 

“Do you ever wonder what our lives would have been like, if we'd stayed friends looking enough to actually be able to buy that bar?”

They'd been nineteen and just two years away. Charlie and Ronnie both had shitty jobs that paid like crap to save up, and Dennis had been ferreting away money from their mother for years.

“Yeah,” he says. “But I wouldn't have done anything differently, you know? I didn't regret it.”

“Dennis does have a tendency to overreact,” Dee says, nodding. “I think it was Ro-Mac that pushed him over the edge. They've always been super gay together; he probably felt betrayed.”

“Do you think they were banging?”

Dee laughs. “Probably. Hypocrites.”

She doesn't think about the fact that their hands are brushing. She doesn't think about the fact that they've all but forgotten the movie. She resolutely doesn't think about how Dennis would react; the asshole holds a grudge longer than anyone she's ever known. Instead, she looks over at Charlie as he looks at the television, looking confused about the movie (honestly, she doesn’t even know what’s going on anymore at this point, either), and thinks about how stupid they all were to miss this. 

They say their goodbyes after a while longer, when they’ve blown their way through a few movies and a hundred different conversations. Dee doesn’t remember the last time she was so comfortable with someone (yes, she does--it was with Charlie, in high school), enough to be emotionally honest in ways she would never be with Dennis. She tells him things she’s kept to herself for so long she thought she’d end up taking them to her grave. 

Truthfully, she’s sad to see him go. They’d certainly bickered while he’d been there, but it had never escalated to the level of personal insults that arguments with Frank and Dennis end up at. She’d missed him. She misses him now, alone in her apartment at 11pm, realizing they’d spent nearly an entire day together. 

Missing him is strange; like a feeling that has always been there, pushed to the back of her mind with other things she doesn’t like to think about, filed away with particularly biting comments from her mother or brother and insecurities she needs to get past on a daily basis is a piece of her that has been missing Charlie Kelly for over a decade. 

Missing him leads her to familiar places; phone calls that turn hours on end, more visits to her apartment that drag on longer and longer into the night. They fall into an easy routine this way, as if they’d never stopped being sort-of-friends of convenience. 

She’s at  _ his  _ place this time, a month or two later, and she doesn’t even care how messy it is, or that she can see where he’d tried to de-clutter by shoving things into barely concealed hiding places. It’s late--she’d spent the entire day on set for a new television show. It’s her biggest project yet, and she’s excited to share it with Charlie now that her role is official and they’ve started filming. 

“Alright,” she says, standing in the doorway to the kitchen with her hands on her hips. “You got any beer?” Charlie points her towards the fridge, and when she walks across the room, she thinks maybe she's imagining the way his eyes follow her.

The beer in his fridge is the same kind they used to buy with fake IDs back in high school. Dee can't help the wave of nostalgia that comes over her when she sees the label.  Dennis doesn't like to drink these anymore, and they remind Dee of bitterness. 

“Wow,” she says.  “I haven't had one of these since...well, you know.”

“I like them,” Charlie says, looking at her intently, like he’s trying to read her. Dee pops open a can and takes a drink. 

“Not as good as I remember.” All of her memories of this beer and tinged with adolescent overindulgence, the taste lost to the happiness she’d felt all the times she’d been drinking it. 

“Really?” he asks, sounding surprised. 

“It tasted good when I hadn’t  _ had  _ anything better, you know?” 

Charlie shakes his head. “No, I don’t.” 

Dee laughs, shakes her head, and takes another drink before settling on the couch with him. 

By the time it’s midnight, she’s still there, laughing on his couch at some ridiculous joke he'd made, and he's looking at her with his eyes sparkling. His couch is bigger than hers, but they’re still pressed to one side, and she’s not even thinking about moving further away to keep their bodies from touching. 

“I need to piss,” Charlie says, far too loud for just the two of them, and stands up. 

“Thanks for letting me know,” Dee says, voice flat. 

“You’re welcome,” he says before heading into the bathroom. 

Dee hears the door fully close--no lock, she notes--and she’s on her feet a moment later. With how much he’d had to drink, she’s sure she has at least a little bit of time to snoop before he comes back into the living room. She shuffles around some of his things, but mostly finds random things of no consequence. 

But by the time Charlie’s walking out of the bathroom (Did he even wash his hands?), she’s got a handful of papers in her hands, and she’s flipping through them quietly. 

“What are these?” Dee asks, holding up the stack of papers with symbols and bizarre combinations of letters on them. 

“They’re lyrics,” Charlie says, but he’s looking at the floor. 

“For what?” She carries the stack of scattered papers to the couch and sits down next to Charlie, squinting at them curiously. The paper on the top has a few scattered words that she can’t make out (except  _ Dee. _ That’s perfectly clear, even in his childish handwriting.), but there are pictures: a beetle, a pot of honey, a packet of sugar. She can’t even begin to comprehend what the song might be about, but the sight of her name makes her heart flutter in her chest.    


“Songs.” He shrugs. Charlie doesn’t look like he wants to talk about it, but Dee’s nothing if not pushy.

“Yeah, but what are they about?”    


He looks up at her, finally, and his eyes are clearer than she can remember seeing them,“You.” 

He looks so vulnerable that Dee bites back a venomous comment. She doesn’t need to be like that, she reminds herself. Charlie hasn’t been insulting her at every turn, he hasn’t given her any need to be on the defensive; he’s just been a really great friend. So what if her stomach keeps flipping? 

“Can you sing this one for me?” She asks, holding out the top paper in the stack. It looks like the most recent. His eyes scan the page for a moment, and he nods. 

“It’s not finished yet, though. It’s kinda just the beginning of a song, maybe, and really it’s derivative of another song I wrote, so…” Charlie trails off. “I need--” he says, looking around the room for a moment before wedging open a cabinet door and pulling out a folding keyboard. It’s old and has clearly been through some abuse; she can see where some of the keys are more worn than others, scratches in the silver paint that covers the body of the thing, and a dent in the hollow metal legs that hold it up. 

He sets it up in front of the couch and settles down, closing his eyes for a moment before playing. The music is a lot like his album--simple, melodic, but beautiful--and Dee’s all the more impressed to know that he’d had no music lessons or training. 

“Dee,” he sings, resolutely looking at her now. “You’re sweeter than a beetle. You’re the honey that the bee makes. You’re the sugar on the pound carrot. You make life sweet, Dee. You make life sweet for I. A-and I..” 

He stands up now, no longer playing. 

“That’s the end of the song,” he says, voice raising in volume with each word. “There’s nothing else, since I haven’t finished it. I’ll just take these,” he waves the page with the lyrics, “and put them away, where they’ll be safe from someone who might want to steal my ideas.”

He opens his mouth like he’s about to shove the paper into his mouth when Dee crosses the room and stops him. 

“What the fuck are you doing, Charlie?” 

“Protecting my inter-sectional property, Dee!” He’s all but shrieking now. She doesn’t correct him when he uses the wrong word. 

“Are you embarrassed?” She can’t help the tiny laugh that sneaks out of her mouth, and she covers it with a hand. 

“No, it’s just that it’s not finished, you know, and I want to keep everything secret until it’s finished, which is why I write them in code, of course.” 

She stares at him, unsure what to say. She’d seen the bottom of the page--a crude drawing of an eye, a heart, and the letter you. It’s not hard to figure out what that might mean. 

She’s not sure which of them closes the distance first, but his lips are on hers and she’s pressing closer to him, pushing her hands through his hair. They barely part before they kiss a second time, a third, and then Dee’s pulling back, breathing hard. Charlie's hands have found their way into the fabric of her shit, balling around it and keeping her there. He can't seem to look away from her eyes, and she can't seem to look away from his. 

“Oh, shit,” he says. 

**Author's Note:**

> As always, please let me know what you think! Comments make my day.


End file.
